Somalia: Information on Ali Garad Jama, a king of the Dhulbante clan, and on any positions held by him in the Somali government before or after Barre's 1969 coup

Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Somalia: Information on Ali Garad Jama, a king of the Dhulbante clan, and on any positions held by him in the Somali government before or after Barre's 1969 coup, 1 January 1996, SOM22804.E, available at: http://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6ab9d58.html [accessed 10 December 2016]

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Only limited information on Ali Garad Jama could be found among the sources consulted by the DIRB.

According to A Modern History of Somalia, Ali Garad Jama was a member of the United Somali Party (USP), a Dir/Darod party from northern Somalia, who served as minister of education in the 1960 independence government of Somalia (Lewis 1988, 164). Additional and/or corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the DIRB.

In a telephone interview on 30 January 1995, a professor specializing in Somalia at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis stated that Somali clans traditionally did not have the position of king as part of their leadership. If such a position had existed, it would have been a figurehead position lacking authority and a mechanism for administration and enforcement within the typical clan structure (ibid.). The professor stated that the British and Italian colonial administrations of Somalia sometimes designated a clan elder as a "headman" in order to facilitate their administration of the territory (ibid.).

This Response was prepared after researching publicly accessible information currently available to the DIRB within time constraints. This Response is not, and does not purport to be, conclusive as to the merit of any particular claim to refugee status or asylum. Please find below the list of additional sources consulted in researching this Information Request.

References

Lewis, I.M. 1988. A Modern History of Somalia. Boulder, Col.: Westview Press.

Professor specializing in Somalia, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. 30 January 1996. Telephone interview.

Additional Sources Consulted

Africa Research Bulletin. 1987-1990.

The Shaping of Somali Society. 1982.

Socialist Somalia: Rhetoric and Reality. 1988.

Somalia: A Country Study. 1993.

Somalia: A Government at War with Its Own People. 1990.

Somalia: The Missed Opportunity. 1994.

Somalia: Nation in Search of a State. 1987.

Copyright notice: This document is published with the permission of the copyright holder and producer Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (IRB). The original version of this document may be found on the offical website of the IRB at http://www.irb-cisr.gc.ca/en/. Documents earlier than 2003 may be found only on Refworld.